Jon O'Brien

Thanks Todd. Excellent advice. I'm a stubborn fellow and will keep trying to make a buck from filming on film. Not much of a buck. I also got into digital cinematography, having started out with the idea of specialising in real film cinematography for weddings and so on. Filming is already something I do on the side, so the money I make elsewhere is already funding my art. But, what you say about making money from vintage clip restoration does also interest me because, along the way of getting into film production, I've developed good skills in grading, editing etc. So it would be possible for me to get into vintage film clips as another side income, as you have described.

Thanks so much for your detailed and very helpful response! Yes, the life of the 'artist'/content creator: the eternal tension between what the creative person wants to make and what his or her audience wants to buy. My mother was a painter and won many awards but almost never sold a painting. I'd be glad to film vintage auto events. Or vintage anything events. Then sell the footage but looks like authentic vintage footage only is the one customers currently want. I'd like to do the filming myself of course 🙂

Thanks Todd for this excellent information. Could I ask, who would mainly be buying these vintage footage clips that you've restored? Would the clips be used in music videos for instance, or documentaries, videos on YouTube about cars? I'm genuinely curious.

... and another thing. I'm sick of videographers putting their hands up to do work for free. Videographers and filmmakers, and anyone who's shelled out hard cash to make movies of any sort: refuse, and i mean point blank refuse, to shoot any more gigs for anyone for free. Take your clips off the cheapskate clip sites, if you can. Cut the cheap bastards off from their footage. Every time you shoot something for free you're killing cinematography as a profession.

Yeah. To hell with that, as they say. The clip companies can take a flying F.

https://www.stocksy.com/ideas/film-stock-footage-why-super-8-16mm-still-rule/

All those stock video clip sites have reams of very similar shots, all in glorious 4K. Gimbal tracking shots of inner city buildings. Drone city scapes and interesting geological features. Shots of people sipping chardonnay at street bars or whatever. Drone shots and uber slow motion shots of people in the surf. Slow mo of wedding couples hand in hand. It's all the same stuff. Much of the most interesting stuff is shot with a drone. I don't know why they keep accepting clips because they already have more than enough. Almost no one is going to need Super 8 or 16mm B roll.

Yes, I've been thinking about it. I guess it makes sense that, really, who is going to want to buy any Super 8 or 16mm footage of anything? I'm not being satirical. It makes sense that content creators are going to want digital stock footage because, let's face it, a lot of video production is very shallow, glib, commercial .... call it what you want but, whatever it is, standard video production doesn't interest me in the least. I'd literally rather be a bus driver than try to make a living as a wedding videographer for instance. Or a 'corporate videographer', whatever that actually is (everyone says they do corporate videos on their websites haha). So, all these video content creators really just want shallow, commercial-looking clips to insert into their boring videos that look exactly like every other content creator's boring videos. I'm not being cynical or negative, I'm telling it like it is. But just who would actually buy Super 8 or 16mm clips? Maybe once a blue moon you might sell a very cheap clip to some teenager making a music video. But that's total peanuts. Not worth the time to upload the clip.

Perhaps some enterprising individual should start up their own film footage only stock clips site.

Hmm, sounds like they don't reeaalllly want film footage despite hinting that it's cool to shoot film clips on film. Looks like it's on to plan G (or is it plan M, somewhat down the list from plan B and plan C) for making a buck from shooting film.

Hi, I recently uploaded 10 Super 8 and 16mm film clips, all shot within the last year and graded to a high standard, to a site that seems to have a high profile and seemed to be saying that they wanted more film footage clips, but my clips were rejected. Okay, maybe not the best clips, but I thought pretty interesting especially when compared to what this site already had up for sale. Anyway, so that was my experience with that site. I'm pretty sure I can sell my clips elsewhere. Can anyone help me out with advice as to what sites are most likely to be looking for Super 8 and 16mm film clips? I find all the advice on YouTube to be aimed at digital video makers. Thanks!

Now, Tyler, could you be a bit more positive towards efforts to make a new film stock? There is a lot of financial risk involved for anyone doing this. Give this manufacturer a chance for heaven's sake and let them improve the stock and make adjustments to it. Okay, so you got poor results earlier on, with 16mm. Fair enough. We get that. But as Mark said, the stock is no doubt being improved. It's looking really, really promising so far, what I've seen on 35mm. Just dwell on this thought: it's always difficult to make something that's good. It's very easy though to find fault, and to bring down. Don't always assume things are going to turn out 'like crap'. Because if that's what you always assume that's what you'll get. Give people (and new products) a chance.

Hopefully the camera is fine but it could be that a nylon gear or the drive shaft has worn out. Does the circular take-up drive at the back of film compartment rotate when you press the run button? I had a Super 8 camera that stopped working and I opened it up and found that some internal nylon parts had degraded. You could feel it that it was warming up too on the outside if you ran it for a bit. It was just chewing gears. The Canon 814 is probably fine though as this is a very well made camera.

Oooh yes, I agree. Tiny, subtle bit of gate weave is good in my opinion. Gives an unconscious feeling of freedom to the image. I'm not kidding. If film doesn't move just a bit, a tiny bit, in the gate, in my opinion something doesn't look quite right. It's like vibrato in violin playing in my opinion ... none at all and it sounds tight.

I always said Australians have a robust and innovative streak in them. They tend to see things in a unique and fresh way and come up with innovations. But that doesn't extend to field testing cameras by dragging them behind 4WDs haha (they don't call them SUVs in the bush)